While performing laparoscopic surgeries, blood vessels have to be closed and sealed in order to prevent blood leakage from the incision of the surgical site. Blood vessels can be closed or sealed by using specific surgical instruments, such as a vessel clip operated with a vessel clip applier. The use of such vessel clip applier is to extend a rod-like vessel clamping assembly into the human body, and then operate the grip part of such vessel clamping assembly to actuate the clamp portion at its front end to clamp the vessel clip that is sent to the clamp portion. The blood vessel clip is then pressed against the blood vessel to close it.
In order to avoid blood contaminations, the conventional vessel clip appliers are designed as disposable instruments. For instance, in TW Patent Application No. 104118985 (Publication No. 201642812), an automatic clip applier is provided having an outer sleeve on a clamping assembly, in which the front end of the clamping assembly has a clamp portion, a clip pusher for pushing the clip ahead toward the clamp portion, and a first sleeve and a second sleeve sleeved on the rear end of the clamping assembly. The clamp portion clamps while the first sleeve moves forward. At the beginning of the forward movement of the first sleeve, the second sleeve will be moved forward together with the first sleeve. Then, while the second sleeve reaches a later position, it will no longer be moved together with the first sleeve and can be moved backward to drop in another vessel clip to the inner side of the clamp portion.
The aforementioned process of triggering the movement of the clamping assembly by the automatic clip applier is to press its grip to move the corresponding linkage unit through the first and second linking members in order to link the linkage unit of the first sleeve or the second sleeve to move. The entire automatic clip applier is discarded after each use. The linkage unit between the first and second sleeves and the grip of the clamping assembly of the aforementioned automatic clip applier is a separable structure, which means that the clamping assembly is an independent structure that can be separated from the grip. However, because the grip and the clamping assembly are designed to be fixed together in an inseparable manner, both the grip and the clamping assembly have to be discarded together each time the automatic clip applier has been used, thereby greatly increasing the cost of using that kind of automatic clip appliers.